Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified certain investment schemes promoted by some countries to enable rich people to obtain citizenship in that country without insisting on their physical presence in the country at least for a minimum period of 90 days in a year. The investment schemes are termed as Citizenship By Investment (CBI) and Residence By Investment (RBI), while different names have been assigned to the schemes by the countries. Individuals…

As per the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA-Model1) between India and USA, Indian Reporting Financial Institutions (RFI) have submitted data relating to the financial accounts for the calendar years ended 2015, 2016 & 2017 to Central Board of Direct Taxes(CBDT). CBDT has commenced exchange of data with USA-Internal Revenue Service (USA-IRS). All the RFIs are required to report U.S. Taxpayer Identification Numbers (U.S. TINs) for the US reportable accounts. If such RFIs comply with the procedure, then…

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to protect the international financial system from Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (ML/FT) risks and to encourage greater compliance with the AML/CFT (Anti Money Laundering/Combating Financing of Terrorism) standards, identifies jurisdictions that have strategic deficiencies and works with them to address those deficiencies that pose a risk to the international financial system. There are around 50 jurisdictions with weak measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Account…

Technology is spreading its wings everywhere like wildfire and BFSI is not an exception to this. Rapid strides in Technology have resulted in exploring outsourced services & resources to render efficient service to customers. Is it necessary to outsource services, given the strong and well-trained workforce available in sectors like BFSI ? While I agree that staff available in BFSI are knowledgeable in handling domain related services, but their technical skills and experience may not…

I had a visitor the other day: head of a company that has a few specialty business divisions, including Oncology. I asked him: what brings you to Bangalore so often? And he said he has been personally visiting Bangalore once a month for the last 4 months, with a view to visit a large Cancer hospital, to win the account. It was yet to happen. That set me thinking. It is obvious that Specialty business…

Before I expand on Security aspects of a CRM/SFE application, let us look into some basic questions. Security – What is it? All customers are aware of it. Security – Needed? All customers will of course agree Security – Criteria for vendor evaluation? Not always Some Pharma companies of course have a stringent process to evaluate the vendor and the offering on various information security parameters. Some companies opt for own server which is not…

Needless to say, Common Reporting Standard (CRS) Compliance by Financial Institutions is a statutory requirement.The regulation encompasses Due diligence completion and reporting of Financial Accounts of Individuals, Entities and Controlling persons of the Entities with the foreign resident status of a CRS jurisdiction. The procedure for Due Diligence of Individuals is relatively simple compared to that of Entities as it requires several checks to be carried out before arriving at the reportable status of the…

I have been associated with the Pharma industry globally, for a number of years now, as the CEO of a company that is focused on providing CRM and SFE solutions to the Industry. When I look around, three things strike me. Large ERP vendors who also have a CRM, do not seem to succeed as much in the CRM space, as in the ERP space. SAP is an example. Most leading Pharma companies use a…

In the Pharma industry, when it comes to software solutions, I have seen these two terms, being used interchangeably. Is that correct? Can all vendors providing solutions to the industry’s sales force, claim that their solutions are SFE solutions? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management SFE stands for Sales Force Effectiveness To me, an MR or Area Manager or anyone in the sales organization needs to have good Customer Relations to be effective, but that…

Challenges: Each country desires its residents to be tax transparent and in the process the statutory authorities introduce multiple due diligence procedures to be adopted by Financial Institutions (FI). These procedures vary from time to time depending on varying demands either from local government or from Global practices. The compliance rules/procedures imposed by tax authorities of different jurisdictions have thrown challenges for the Financial Institutions in implementing such procedures on the account holders especially the…